INTHEBLACK Mental Health 2021 - Magazine - Page 26
Mental Health and Resilience
W O R K S M A R T // AT T E N T I O N S PA N
UNDIVIDED
ATTENTION
STORY JOHANNA LEGGATT
A RE ENDL ES S M EETI NG S, EMAIL NOTIFICATIO NS AND SO C IAL MED IA
M A X I NG OUT YOUR “M ENTAL BANDWIDTH”? HER E’S H OW TO R EGAIN
CONTRO L OVER YO U R ATTENTIO N SPAN.
W
hen was the last time you sat down
to read, undistracted, for an hour?
Can you recall reading a news
story from start to finish without being
distracted by a pinging inbox or the urge
to check your phone?
A 2019 study in Nature Communications has
found that our collective attention span is
narrowing under the weight of information
overload, while the urge for “newness”
makes us switch between topics more rapidly.
This comes as no surprise to Danette
Fenton-Menzies CPA, business coach and
director of learning at Magical Learning, who
says our attention spans have likely worsened
during the stress of the pandemic.
“When we are really stressed, the blood
flows away from the executive function into
the fight-or-flight part of the brain,” she says.
However, the good news is there are steps
we can take to improve our attention span.
MAKE SLEEP A PRIORITY
Sleep is the foundation of a focused workday,
according to Fenton-Menzies.
“If we don’t get our sleeping right, we
wake up tired, we’re eating sugary food, we
caffeinate ourselves and we’re on our phone
as soon as we get up,” she notes.
The trick is to remove mobile phones from
bedrooms, which will not only stop the negative
impact of the blue light on your sleep patterns,
but will also prevent you from working from bed.
“I worked with a CEO who would wake up to
go to the bathroom and reply to emails on his
phone in the middle of the night,” she says.
26 ITB October 2021
It is also important to maximise the first
hour of every day, rather than automatically
check your emails.
“Do the most important thing first, when
you are most alert,” Fenton-Menzies says.
KEEP RECORDS
Some of us will be more susceptible to
certain tools of distraction than others.
Fenton-Menzies recommends keeping
a journal.
“At the end of each day, ask yourself, out of
10, how focused you were that day,” she says.
If the number is below seven, she
recommends writing down the distractions
that took your sustained attention away. Was
it your sleep? The back-to-back meetings?
“Once you become aware of what’s causing
the distractions, you are then able to make
changes,” Fenton-Menzies says.
PLAN YOUR TASKS AND BREAKS
How often have you careened from one
meeting to the next, with barely time to
breathe? Back-to-back scheduling has a
damaging impact on our attention span,
all but ensuring we are not fully present.
Fenton-Menzies says not only do people
need to prioritise breaks, but they also
need to schedule them in their calendars,
alongside meetings.
“When we have a break, our brain connects
all of the important stuff that we have learned.
Otherwise, our brain gets flooded and then
foggy,” she says.
TAKE CONTROL OF SOCIAL MEDIA
One of the chief culprits of distraction is the
vast “time suck” that is social media.
Fenton-Menzies suggests taking control of
your social media – deleting apps off your
phone, putting certain limits around use –
otherwise social media will control you, not
the other way around.
“Getting rid of all of those distractions
gives us that mental bandwidth back,”
she notes.
“People start saying to me, ‘Now I am
reading books again’, ‘I can now actually sit
and read a full article, rather than swiping at
something else that attracted me’.”